Disk drives typically use heads residing on sliders to read from and write to the magnetic media. Read and write transducers residing in the head are flown at a small, controlled spacing above the magnetic medium during read and write operations. Although generally desired to operate in close proximity to but not touching the disk, the head may also contact the media. This prolonged contact, for example on the order of tens of microseconds or more, is known as touchdown. For example, heads typically use a thermal actuator that generates heat to control the head-media spacing. Heat generated by the thermal actuator causes local thermal expansion of the head, which locally reduces the spacing between the head and magnetic media. The thermal actuator can be driven to induce sufficient heating for contact between the head and media, or touchdown. This touchdown is intentional and is generally performed on each drive during initial drive calibration. Touchdown may also occur at other times during disk drive operation, for example due to changes in environmental conditions, operation of the disk drive outside of desired parameters, or contamination to the head that causes the prolonged contact described above.
Touchdown is detected in the drive operation as well as in testing. Conventional touchdown detection may be performed using a variety of techniques. For example, touchdown may be detected through disk slow down, readout channel noise, strain gauges, and/or acoustic emission. However, no single technique works across all media radii. In addition to detecting touchdown for calibration purposes, it is desirable to accurately detect touchdown in order to limit contact time between the head and disk. This is because prolonged contact is generally undesirable during operation as it may lead to drive failure.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for providing improved touchdown detection.